The Fox in the Attic by Richard Hughes Read Free Book Online

house, the umbrellas in the street below, that Tuesday, looked like mushrooms on the run (thought Sylvia Davenant), and the tops of the cars like special sleek slugs—also very much on the run, as they cleft a passage through the mushrooms.
    â€œA good simile,” thought Lady Sylvia, “because mushrooms and slugs both are creatures of the rain, the very thought of them evokes wetness—but no, a bad simile because mushrooms never move at all and even slugs are ... sluggish. But, ‘ run ...’? What does run in the rain?—Only colors I suppose,” she concluded rather wildly.
    With an effort she recalled her attention to Janey at her side. For this was little Janey’s “Hour”: her drawing-room hour with her aunt between tea and bedtime. Janey had flattened her nose against the pane, thus clouding it with her breath so that she could hardly see out at all.
    â€œDarling,” said Lady Sylvia brightly, “what do you think those umbrellas look like?”
    â€œLike umbrellas,” said Janey perfunctorily. “Auntie, why does rain?”
    â€œDarling!” said Lady Sylvia, “You know I don’t like being called ‘Auntie,’ it sounds like someone old. Why can’t you just call me ‘Sylvia’? Don’t you think that’s a pretty name?”
    â€œYou are old,” said Janey. “Anyway, Sylvia’s a girl in the Gardens already ...‘Saliva,’ I call her.”
    â€œ Darling! ”
    Janey withdrew her face an inch or two from the misted glass, put out her tongue and licked herself a neat round peephole.
    â€œLook!” she cried, pointing through the trees at a sudden light which appeared in a top window on the far side of the Square: “There’s Polly-wolly going to bed HOURS BEFORE ME —YAH!” she yelled: “Polly-wolly-doodle! Pollyollywollyolly-doodle-OODLE-OOOOO!”
    The yell could not possibly have carried across the wide Square but it nearly split her aunt’s eardrum: extraordinary it could come from so very small a body!
    â€œDarling please ! Not quite so loud! And who is this ‘Polly’?”
    â€œOh, just a person in the Gardens sometimes ... soppy little kid.” Janey paused, glanced at the clock, considered, and added with a perceptible effort: “I bet she wets her bed.”
    Janey looked sidelong at her aunt. The “Hour” had still twenty minutes to go, but now already Her Ladyship was crossing the room to ring for Janey’s gouvernante . “Goody!” thought Janey, with a chapter to finish upstairs.
    Janey was an only child (and the result of a mechanical accident at that). She had been parked on her Aunt Sylvia for a couple of months interminable to both of them while her parents were getting their divorce.
10
    Janey was quite right about the light opposite. Polly was going to bed, and going to bed rather earlier than usual.
    Nanny had lit the gas, although it was not really dark yet, to combat all that wet and gloom outside. Now she sat in front of an enormous blaze of coal mending her stockings (which were of black cotton with white toes and heels). The heat of the fire, and the steam rising from the round zinc bath on the middle of the carpet, made the room with its tight-shut window like a hothouse; and Polly’s face was shiny with perspiration. Nanny had lit the light against the gloom but Polly wanted to look out: she was feeling sad, and the rain and gloom outside and all those wet hurrying people suited her mood.
    Polly had a slight cold—it always happened when she came to London! This was the reason she was to have her bath in the nursery tonight instead of going down the draughty stairs to the big mahogany bathroom two floors below. Moreover, Polly had been today to the dentist. That also seemed always to happen whenever she came to London. He seldom hurt her, but he did indignities to the secret places of her